History of Art-Net
Art-Net is a lighting protocol that allows for data to be sent over an Ethernet network using UDP-based packet structure to control lighting instruments. Art-Net is owned and copyrighted by Artistic License (AL) Engineering Ltd. More information can be found on Artistic License's website.
Art-Net I
Released in 1998, supported 256 universes of ArtDMX, sent via broadcast. (Though unicast generally worked). AL claimed an effective limit of around 10-40 active universes, though this was often as low as 4-8 in real systems as the receivers get overloaded.
Art-Net II
Released in 2006, stated that ArtDMX should be broadcast at startup matching Art-Net I, then switch to unicast after using ArtPoll to discover all the receiving nodes. This was to reduce network traffic, however the output was identical to Art-Net I.
Art-Net 3
Released in 2011 and expanded the universe number range to from an 8-bit number to 15-bit meaning that a total of 32,767 universes can be addressed and prohibited broadcast of ArtDMX. All data transmitted would be unicast instead of broadcast.
Art-Net 4
Released in 2016 and changed the way DMX ports get configured and discovered to permit more than 4 DMX ports per IP address. It also deprecated ArtDMX in favor of E1.31 sACN. Art-Net 4 is setup as a discovery, management and RDM tool, while using sACN for the live control data.
Implementation in Eos
Eos will only allow broadcast of the original 256 Art-Net 1 universes, for compatibility with current and historical specifications.
Eos 3.2.x and higher sends Art-Poll by default so tools like DMX Workshop can find it, however, at this time it doesn't use the discovery so unicast needs manual configuration.